Hiding In the Trees
by FallenShateiel
Summary: Sequel to Enigma. Percy can't take it anymore. Or better yet. What Percy doesn’t want. Slash. SSPW


Title: Hiding in the Trees

Rating: R

Pairing: PW/SS

Summary: Sequel to Enigma. Percy can't take it anymore. Or better yet. What Percy doesn't want.

A/N: I didn't feel like getting it beta'd. Make comments on what should be changed if you like

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"Hey Perce, pass the potatoes." George's face has a long scar protruding downwards but he still has that grin and glint in his eye.

The entire dinner affair is loud and rambunctious. Nearly everyone is having at least three conversations at once, all of them are different from the next.

From beside him Severus is talking to his sister about different Healing Salves and how the properties can be used differently to the next.

Percy is perhaps the only one who's not really talking.

He has nothing to say really.

But he'll still smile and answer the questions that are put to him.

But he mostly just sits there feeling torn with the smell that is his lover and that dark void that wants to swallow him up.

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The day that he walked in to their apartment and found his father and the entire sitting there waiting for him… he didn't know what to think.

He wanted to scream at them to get the hell out of his life.

And he wanted to touch them. The same way he would run his fingers over the pictures he kept in on his nightstand, just wishing that the pictures could be real.

The day that he talked to them about forgiveness for being stubborn and that it was all of their faults. Only Weasley pride would allow it to go on for as long as it did…

Percy didn't know what to do.

He couldn't even figure out what he should think.

All that he could do was feel betrayed by the tall dark man who shared his bed at night.

So when his mother tearfully embraced him, and all was forgiven he wanted a dark hole to swallow him up.

Percy knows that the thoughts are selfish. After all he wants his family back. He wants them to accept his lover, Severus Snape right?

Wrong.

Because he's back to being Perfect Percy. The one who instead of turning his back on his older ex-Death Eater lover, he gives up his job. He's the one who searches for honest work rather than giving into the media's offerings of revealing dark secrets about the Ministry.

Because he's back in the house he was never comfortable in. Ron when he was a kid could spend hours pealing the paint off with his fingernails until Percy would come over and cut off his nails.

Percy doesn't want to know that Severus Snape is a family friend who's welcomed warmly into his childhood home. Where he is embraced as a family member because he's currently with Percy.

It could be that Percy can watch his father and his lover interact as equals.

And though his father is older than his lover he doesn't want to know that his lover is older than him by a number of years.

All he wants is to crawl into a hole and lick his poor wounds until he thinks it's safe to come out.

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Soft kisses on his neck are something that Severus loves. And Percy is only too willing to oblige to this.

Percy will slowly work his way to that jaw where he planted their first kiss. The hardness of the dry skin would have once made this redhead shudder in revulsion but now he just lets his tongue slide over it.

He crawls over his lover's body and rubs himself against that battle scarred underneath him. There are fine steady warm hands on his back running trails over his spine. There are hot lips kissing his shoulder when Percy leans his head back and nuzzles his chin in that oily hair…

He'll groan slightly as he hears the slight rasp of his lover's deep voice,

"Do you want to lie down?"

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He wants to take Severus and run for the hills. A hill where he doesn't find out he's basically been given a shop, to create his and Severus' Apothecary to run. A hill where he doesn't have to be grateful and accept the gruff 'Be Good's' of his brother's and pretend that the rough slap on his back doesn't bother him.

Where he could look at Severus and see the man who is still cold and aloof with indifference.

Instead of this man who's so obviously happy with the turn of events. This man who has every reason to be happy, with a lover who will no doubt be there for keeps, with a family full of people who are more accepting of the man now that he is free…

"So what do you think Severus? Does Ginny have what it takes to be a Healer?" The general laughter all around them is something that makes him sick with anxiety that has no place at the table.

"Of course she does! We don't need our old cranky Prof. to tell us that!"

Percy suddenly stands up.

His mother is suddenly right beside him. "Dear? What's wrong? Is it--"

Percy shakes his head. His forehead feels hot as though he has a fever.

"No. I just don't feel very good." He lets out a smile that's weary and tired. Perhaps not as forced as he thinks it should feel.

Severus looks at him with his black eyes. "Yes we should be getting back now." He shakes one of the twins, his father's and Charlie's hand and stands up, "Thank you, Molly."

Mrs. Weasley still looks worried about Percy and tries to do the motherly thing…

"No. That's fine Molly."

Percy lets himself be steered from the house and to where they will Apparate to their current flat.

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He loves to be able to stare at the blur in front of him. Knowing full well whom it is. Even without smell, he would be able to tell who the warmth on his side by just instinct…

He loves it when he hear the breath above him grow more and more ragged as their love making nears its end. The rigid way that Percy has wrap himself around that very firm waist keeps the thrusts into his willing body short and fast.

His right hand digs it's nails into the palm as he clutches that the sheets… the left one is grabbing at the shoulder right above him.

Percy listens for Severus to whimper in a way that tells him he's near…

Percy loves this crude act they perform together. When it is only they.

No one else.

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He feels terrible in the mornings when he gets up. He can't help but want to lie in bed curled into a foetal position until it all goes away.

He wishes that he could disappear and be forgotten while he desperately tries to fill this hole in his chest…

Kisses don't help.

Touches don't work.

Words won't make it all go away.

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**Hiding in the Trees**

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He knows that he did a really shitty thing.

But he awoke in the morning and found that he couldn't do it anymore. That he couldn't stay. That he couldn't just pretend that it was all right …

So when he got on that boat, he didn't look back.

Hasn't looked back.

He stares out into the ocean and finds himself thinking of all the prayers he heard in Severus' church… the one's that ask for a second chance at redemption.

That's what he thinks this is.

That's what he knows it is.

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As fall turns to winter and winter turns to fall, Percy finds himself on the other side of the world.

Where the green grass smells gorgeous and the mountains outside the winter have glaciers at the tips… Where the animals are walking right beside civilization and no one does anything about it.

His hair is red and his smile has come back.

He doesn't feel that desperation. With all the travels he's made he thinks he's ready to go back.

But he doesn't want to show up unannounced. He doesn't want to find things have changed and that nothing is really the same… he doesn't want to find that there is nothing left for him there…

So he waits here staring at the dark forests that are beautiful in all that they contain waiting for the return of that owl…

He wears a shirt that was handmade by a woman in the West of Africa, a pair trouser made by the Spanish, and a pair of slippers made from the natives in the northern parts of Canada…

He feels as though he's new. As though all he can't be hurt by anything as much as he was before.

That he has seen people all over the world and knows what it is to be alive as well as dead…

So he'll wait for that owl to return.

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There is knocking on his cheap hotel door.

His heart jumps into his throat as he springs into action with cleaning up his mess with only six nano-seconds to do it. He finally just gives into his excitement that may just explode his heart and open the door.

He expects to see the man he's dreamed about all these months angered and ready to kill him… but impassioned as he, Percy has been impassioned by him.

What he doesn't want to see is the Manager of the hotel there obviously bursting with questions about his trip in Egypt?

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He sent the owl off two weeks ago and he doesn't know what he's going to do if it doesn't show up.

He comes up with the worry that he'll receive a rejection. That he'll go out on a whim and find out that in England, while he was off doing whatever, that Severus found someone else.

Someone, who wouldn't abandon him.

Percy's afraid that that's exactly what happened. And that he has no place in the heart of a man who will have everything while at the same time being stripped of everything that made him the Potions Master of Hogwarts.

Percy doesn't know why this makes the tears well up in the corner of his eyes. He can guess but that would require thinking about it and he doesn't want to do that either.

So he'll go out for walks out to the lakes… finding them beautiful and everything anyone would think of as paradise.

He'll curl up with a good book on a big rock in front of a lake where there are couple's rowing boats and children near the shore swimming.

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Five weeks and he knows he'll receive no reply.

He's come to believe that he didn't deserve one anyhow.

But he's beginning to miss his homeland. Where the smog escalated to the point where he would be sitting on the steps of stairs hacking up his own lung. Even if he wasn't a smoker.

Percy's not sure what to think of all this.

He knows what he wants to say to the lady at the clerk. The one who's asking how may she help him?

"A one way ticket to London, please."

It feels as if these will be the last words he ever says.

And they feel great.

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When he gets to London he finds he can't stay in England.

Knowing how close he is. Yet how desperately far he is away.

So he takes the boat to Ireland and sets up camp there in a small cabin he ends up renting.

He'll be able to manage with this.

He does freelance writing in his spare time. Getting money from that on the side of odd job he does around for other people.

Which he usually cheats with when no one's looking by using magic.

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He figures he may as well fix up the cabin while he's here. He has not problems with the villagers around him. With his red hair they all assume he's Irish anyhow.

So he buys the boards and the other things he doesn't want to transfigure out of other things…

He goes to work.

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There's a wall he's been given permission by the landlord to remove. The only problem with it is that it's made of stone.

And that Percy has it in his head that he wants this to be done manually.

So he spends a lot of time figuring out how it must be done. And a lot more time actually doing it.

By the end of the job he's tired and cranky but also oddly lonely…

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In the pub there is a familiarity around all the people. Friends, family and enemies mingle around with each other. All knowing everything there is to know about the people around them… the dirtiest secrets. Like how that man in the corner was once priest but was found out to be a horrible gambler and so was _let go…_Or how that man impregnated his much too early for it to legitimate…

Percy drinks his ale as he listens to the dribble of all the people around him.

Smiling softly, thinking of other times, other people, other places…

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It's autumn once again, the same time of year that Percy woke up and found he couldn't stay.

He drinks a Pepsi, remembering the days when it would have been a hot butterbeer in his hands warming him up. Rather than this sugar filled liquid sodium that rots his teeth.

He lays in his bed listening to the rainfall outside his window… smelling how fresh the air smells when there is moisture in the air.

He thinks of when he was in South Africa and was in the rainforests… the otherworldly feel of everything… the excitement of the unknown of an unexplored Amazon…

He thinks about how much, while he was walking underneath all those different shades of green that make the most gorgeous unearthly retractions in the sunlight, he wished that it was that tall harsh man walking right beside him.

He dozes off on his bed watching the ceiling with the artificial clear night sky dance in his eyes…

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"Percy? It's Percy, right?" There's a chipper coming from right beside him in a tiny little corner shop. He turns to look at the voice only to see a young man with mousy brown hair.

Percy smiles, uncertain of the proper reply.

The mousy haired man sticks out his hand.

"Seamus Finnegan. I'm a friend with your brother Ron." Ah, Percy remembers. He once confiscated a dirty magazine off this boy.

"Well, I wouldn't have ever imagined to suddenly run into you." He says this politely. Thinking of all the ways that this meeting could lead up to.

He's afraid to hope.

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He's working on insolating the cabin better for winter. He finds that he likes to use magic less and less these days.

"We let him keep the shop." Percy's startled that he accidentally hammers his own thumb.

He screams out a loud 'Fuck!' and whimpers as he casts a healing charm on it.

He turns around to face what was inevitable.

Only to find that the hurt thumb may have been preferable to the bloody nose.

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He wants to leave the cabin and find another place to hide.

But he thinks of the off chance that this might lead to that presence of _him._

So he'll stay. Waiting.

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Its nearing January, Christmas is only a day away.

He thinks nothing of the holiday and focuses on the next month. Thinking of how on the 9th Severus Snape will be one more year older. Two more numbers off the last one that Percy last seen him…

He thinks of how cruel he's been to the man.

But he still can't help but hope that Severus understood somehow.

But he knows that he didn't.

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He's cold while walking home from church on a Sunday.

But he doesn't care.

He doesn't regret going to church. Like he has every Sunday since that first time when he sat with Severus in one.

He still doesn't believe in God.

But he still believes in Severus.

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When he does finally think of the way that he's treated Severus he thinks he deserves this coldness. This hardness. This inapproachability…

But it's when he's sitting there in one of the many moments he misses it.

Misses everything.

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On the 20th of January he finally gets his reply.

_**I refuse to be a passing fancy.**_

Percy smiles to himself.

Grabs his coat.

While he's zipping it up, he whispers the words he never bothered to say,

'I love you'.

A passing fancy indeed.

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**the end.**


End file.
